Readline-4.2a available for FTP

[Chet Ramey]

The first public release of the GNU Readline library, version
4.2a, is now available for FTP with the URLs

ftp://ftp.cwru.edu/pub/bash/readline-4.2a.tar.gz
ftp://ftp.gnu.org/pub/gnu/readline/readline-4.2a.tar.gz

and from the usual GNU mirror sites.

This distribution is essentially a standalone version of the
readline library that appears in Bash-2.05a together with an
`autoconf' framework.  The documentation has been updated and
is current.  Postscript, DVI, and Info versions of the Readline
and History manuals are included.  A list of changes in this
release is appended to this announcement.

GNU Readline is a library which provides programs with an input
facility including command-line editing and history.  Editing
commands similar to both emacs and vi are included.  The GNU
History library, which provides facilities for managing a list of
previously-typed command lines and an interactive command line
recall facility similar to that provided by csh, is also present.
The history library is built as part of the readline library as well
as separately.

Diffs from readline-4.2 are available with the URLs

ftp://ftp.cwru.edu/pub/bash/readline-4.2-4.2a.diff.gz
ftp://ftp.gnu.org/pub/gnu/readline/readline-4.2-4.2a.diff.gz

The diffs should be applied using `patch -p1 patch-file' from within
a readline-4.2 source directory.

Please send readline bug reports to bug-readline@gnu.org.

+========== CHANGES ==========+
This document details the changes between this version, readline-4.2a,
and the previous version, readline-4.2.

1.  Changes to Readline

a.  More `const' and type casting fixes.

b.  Changed rl_message() to use vsnprintf(3) (if available) to fix buffer
    overflow problems.

c.  The completion code no longer appends a `/' or ` ' to a match when
    completing a symbolic link that resolves to a directory name, unless
    the match does not add anything to the word being completed.  This
    means that a tab will complete the word up to the full name, but not
    add anything, and a subsequent tab will add a slash.

d.  Fixed a trivial typo that made the vi-mode `dT' command not work.

e.  Fixed the tty code so that ^S and ^Q can be inserted with rl_quoted_insert.

f.  Fixed the tty code so that ^V works more than once.

g.  Changed the use of __P((...)) for function prototypes to PARAMS((...))
    because the use of __P in typedefs conflicted g++ and glibc.

h.  The completion code now attempts to do a better job of preserving the
    case of the word the user typed if ignoring case in completions.

i.  Readline defaults to not echoing the input and lets the terminal
    initialization code enable echoing if there is a controlling terminal.

j.  The key binding code now processes only two hex digits after a `\x'
    escape sequence, and the documentation was changed to note that the
    octal and hex escape sequences result in an eight-bit value rather
    than strict ASCII.

k.  Fixed a few places where negative array subscripts could have occurred.
    
l.  Fixed the vi-mode code to use a better method to determine the bounds of
    the array used to hold the marks, and to avoid out-of-bounds references.
    
m.  Fixed the defines in chardefs.h to work better when chars are signed.
    
n.  Fixed configure.in to use the new names for bash autoconf macros.
    
o.  Readline no longer attempts to define its own versions of some ctype
    macros if they are implemented as functions in libc but not as macros in
    <ctype.h>.

p.  Fixed a problem where rl_backward could possibly set point to before
    the beginning of the line.

q.  Fixed Makefile to not put -I/usr/include into CFLAGS, since it can cause
    include file problems.

2.  New Features in Readline

a.  Added extern declaration for rl_get_termcap to readline.h, making it a
    public function (it was always there, just not in readline.h).

b.  New #defines in readline.h:  RL_READLINE_VERSION, currently 0x0402,
    RL_VERSION_MAJOR, currently 4, and RL_VERSION_MINOR, currently 2.

c.  New readline variable:  rl_readline_version, mirrors RL_READLINE_VERSION.

d.  New bindable boolean readline variable:  match-hidden-files.  Controls
    completion of files beginning with a `.' (on Unix).  Enabled by default.

e.  The history expansion code now allows any character to terminate a
    `:first-' modifier, like csh.

f.  The incremental search code remembers the last search string and uses
    it if ^R^R is typed without a search string.

h.  New bindable variable `history-preserve-point'.  If set, the history
    code attempts to place the user at the same location on each history
    line retrived with previous-history or next-history.

-- 
``The lyf so short, the craft so long to lerne.'' - Chaucer
( ``Discere est Dolere'' -- chet)

Chet Ramey, CWRU    chet@po.CWRU.Edu    http://cnswww.cns.cwru.edu/~chet/